I am a home owner!

It's official - I am now a home owner.  I closed on my house today. I signed my life away, it seems and agreed to pay for the next 30 years.  What a concept.

I am very excited and eager to move.  I will begin to move things this weekend.  Chris is coming to help.  Yeah Chris!!!!!.  Furniture is being delivered Sunday and the dog door is installed Monday.  Then once we have a place to sit, the movers will come on Tuesday morning.  It will be interesting to see what the pups think of the change.  At least I don't have carpeting anymore in case they get confused and decide to pee on the floor instead of making the effort to search for the dog door.  There had been a cat living at the house so it will be fun to watch Rascal spend the rest of her life searching for that cat.  Rascal LOVES cats. I think the dogs will love the bigger back yard.  Not that the pugs fetch anything ever, it will be fun to try to get them to run around a bit. 

The lovely plantings the former owners have in the backyard have been fairly well neglected since the sale and since I have no green thumb, they will have to go.  Till I can get to it though, Rascal will feel like she is in Jungle heaven. 

All the things I have been putting off for so long, like replacing my 20 year old TV and new furniture will come to fruition.  I am upgrading to blu ray disc and the machine has the option of playing Vudu, which is kind of like netflix but all digital and instead of membership, you only pay for what you watch.
I can't wait to get in the house and start measuring.  I love being organized so I am eager to see what kind of fun things I get for the kitchen drawers and closets.  Without a basement I will have to be creative, (though there is storage in the garage).

I am going to paint the front door a light turquoise and get new outdoor lighting.  I have already picked out some lovely fixtures. 

Change is good.  I have always enjoyed change.  The fun part is putting my own touch on this home.  I will be updating you with pictures.

Have a beautiful day.

How's that meditation going?

Well, so far I believe I have meditated one minute.  It's not that I struggle with it so much as I don't make time for it.  And the reason I don't make time for it is because I am afraid of what I might hear God say.  I have no bad experience of meditation.  God has never told me anything scary.  In fact, mostly what I recieve from God is comfort.  But comfort for me is not something I get used to easily.  I am so much harder on myself than God is.  Yet I spend so much more time with my little computer of a brain going over and over the most ridiculous things, like plans and fears and past regrets. 

I have really been spending a lot of time in the past these days.  Ruminating over past hurts.  Were I to spend more time meditating, God would heal all those hurts.  So what am I afraid of?

I don't honestly know.  Except that the few minutes I have spend in God's amazing presence are so powerful and intense, that I get overwhelmed.  Sometimes I just have to spend days living that experience and talking it over with God before I can have another meditative session.  Often, I spend months absorbing the experience.  I spend my days as if a waterfall is slowly pouring over me, washing the concepts of comfort, forgiveness, healing, grace.....in me and through me.

You would think I would get saturated with all God's goodness and live it out in my daily life. Yet time and time again I fail and fall back in to my old worrying routine.  So I spend another minute meditating and the cycle starts all over again.

I would like to meditate more regularly so don't have these big lapses.  So I could be immersed in God's gifts.  But I am afraid of what I might hear, and what I might be called to.  I am not ready to relinquish the life I know for the life that could be.

So I meditate, one minute at a time.

Happy Labor Day

I hope your holiday was happy and that you actually had a three day weekend.  For those who toiled today, I hope it wasn't too bad. And if it was awful, I wish you peace.

I always wanted work that was fulfilling and was fun.  You know that saying that says something to the effect of work that brings joy not being work at all?  I do not have that kind of work.  I do not like my work in fact.  I often think that I mis-heard God when I thought he said, come be a doctor.  I think I should have been a computer engineer or something that doesn't involve talking to people.  That part of the job is exhausting for this introvert.  It just sucks the energy right out of me. 

The practice I have now is not how I pictured it would be 30 years ago.  Patients have changed, they seem to be more demanding.  It's not as financially successful as I had hoped. And it is very, very tiring.  My days are stressful in that each day is usually booked pretty full, but I know there will still be add ons.  I hate interruptions, and there are many. 

Don't get me wrong, most of my patients are lovely people and many are grateful.  I enjoy being able to help someone feel well or walk their journey to the end of life with them.  I am glad to be able to make a living.

I think the reason I don't like my work is that I never feel well.  If I weren't broken, dealing with pain and fatigue most of the time, I think I would like it more.  I would have more energy ( I used to), and would get excited about what each day would bring.  But being exhausted most of the time makes me less able to tolerate the stress and pressure. 

I know that what I really need to be happy at work is to accept myself for what I am.  Not try to be what I was when I had energy. Not try to be perfect as others imagine me. I need to accept scaling back, allowimits limits where they are needed.  Most days I do. 

The thing that works best for me is to take it one day at a time.  Instead I tend to anticipate future problems that may never occur.  When I am able to allow each day to flow on its own without me trying to control it, things go better.  Why is it so hard to be present to the moment then?  I guess because I am a control freak. 

So here is my pledge to take it a day at a time, live in the present.  I am going to start now.

So far so good.

I read today that meditation helps.  In Praying Naked ,essays from Anthony de Mello, SJ, meditation is proposed as a way to connect to yourself and God so that nothing else matters in the day.  That sounds good to me.

I will leave you with a little story from Taking Flight by de Mello: 

The Master was in an expansive mood, so his disciples sought to learn from him the stages he had passed through in his quest for the divine. 

"God first led me by the had," he daid, "into the Land of Action, and there I dwelt for several years.  Then He returned and led me to the Land of Sorrows; there I lived until my heart was purged of every inordinate attachment.  That is when I found myself in the Land of Love, whose burning flames consumed whatever was left in me of self.  This brought me to the Land of Silence, where the mysteries of life and death were bared before my wondering eyes."

"Was that the final stage of your quest?" they asked.

"No," the Master said.  "One day God said, "Today I shall take you to the inermost  sanctuary of the Temple, to the heart of God himself."  And I was led to the Land of Laughter."

Isn't that wonderful.  Right now I am somewhere between the Lands of Love and Silence.  I yearn to be Laughing.